ACT Research CV Electrification Study

Commercial Vehicle Electrification

ACT Research Finds that Electrification Will Make Inroads into the North American Commercial Vehicle Market – Unit Sales over 100,000 by 2035

ACT Research has released its landmark multi-client study, Commercial Vehicle Electrification: To Charge or Not To Charge to charter subscribers, and is now offering it to the public.

Driven by a combination of advances in battery technology, environmental considerations and government policy, and the potential for significant operational cost savings, commercial electric vehicles (CEVs) are seen to grow from a small beachhead today to a significant share of the Classes 4-8 market in the far years of the study horizon (2030 and 2035).

“We believe that electrification will offer a competitive solution for an increasing number of commercial vehicle segments as we look to the decade ahead and beyond,” said Jim Meil, Principal, Industry Analysis for ACT. Meil noted, “Initial adoption will likely be in shorter-range hauls with frequent stops and starts, regular and predictable routes, and daily return-to-base for overnight charging types of operations. Early adopters will tend to be in medium duty and highly specialized Class 8 applications that make the current limitations of battery storage technology more manageable.”

Regarding more distant time horizons, Meil commented, “As battery technology advances with chemistry and design upgrades, performance will improve, costs will drop, and a wider range of applications and duty cycles will open. We see shares reaching about 20% for medium duty and double-digits for Class 8 as a ‘most likely’ case by 2035. In favorable case circumstances – such as oil and diesel prices escalating as they did in 2005, 2009 and 2011 – market take rates for CEVs could get to one-third or higher, depending on the segment.”

The project began in Q4’17 and the final report was released in August 2018.

Key deliverables:

Forecasts of unit sales and market shares annually to 2025 and for years 2030 and 2035 for the United States and Canada